VISION
Our vision has two parts, closely interwoven with each other:
Teach for Climate Justice argues for transforming education to address the true needs of our students and all life on the planet at this critical time of climate-justice crisis; and
The Teach for Climate Justice Project (T4CJ) envisions a powerful grassroots movement bringing the book’s vision to life in classrooms, schools, families, and communities throughout the country.
Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education is a call to action—an urgent plea for pre-K to 12 educators to rise up and provide transformative education attuned to the needs of their students and humanity at this critical inflection point in human history. The book is not a curriculum. Most needed now is an inspiring perspective to guide developmentally appropriate teaching and learning across the grades. At the heart of this vision is the conviction that the goal of education must be climate justice: a world in which human activity has come back into harmony with nature and human well-being is a reality, not just for some but for all. The book is grounded in stories from the classrooms and schools of a diverse group of twenty-one outstanding K-12 educators and four student activists from across the country who are teaching and acting for climate justice. The audience for the book is pre-K – 16 educators, parents, policy makers and all who care about climate, justice, children, young people, and the future of life on our beautiful planet.
Teach for Climate Justice identifies eight key dimensions of climate justice education. These include building beloved communities in our classrooms and schools; cultivating love and understanding of nature; educating for deep understanding of the climate-justice crisis; discovering the many viable alternatives to the systems currently leading humanity to catastrophe; and learning about the power of nonviolent, grassroots movements to bring about transformational change. Above all, throughout their time in school, students have ample opportunities to practice active hope for bringing about the positive futures they envision for their classroom, their school, their community, and the world. Teachers ensure that the content and learning activities are developmentally appropriate for the age of their students.
The Teach for Climate Justice Project (T4CJ) aims to support educators who are teaching for climate justice, to engage many more educators to join them in doing so, and to lay the foundation for a national movement to bring education for climate justice to millions of educators, students, parents, and community members throughout the country and beyond.
In the summer of 2025, co-director Elissa Teles Munoz and I are launching a campaign that will be a major focus of T4CJ’s work for the foreseeable future: to support the development of teach for climate justice study groups in schools and communities throughout the United States and beyond.
A study group is a great way to connect with friends and colleagues, have fun learning, and enjoy wrestling with interesting ideas and information. The study groups we envision as part of the Teach for Climate Justice Project (T4CJ) are about all that—and more. They also aim to inspire and support great teaching, empower educators to live their calling with authenticity and passion, and lay the foundation for a grassroots movement to bring radical, transformative climate-justice education to millions of students, educators, parents, and community members throughout the country.
We’ll begin with study groups on Teach for Climate Justice. As the campaign goes on, we’ll develop study group guides for other outstanding books as well. Next up will be a study group that focuses on teachers organizing for power: The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective by Leo Casey and No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey. We welcome your suggestions for books.
In our study groups, members deepen relationships with colleagues, read the book, wrestle with its arguments, stories, and visions, and Act to educate their students for climate justice and organize to achieve the solidarity and power to give students the great education they need and deserve in this time of climate, environmental, and justice crisis.
If, during the next several years, tens, then hundreds, and then thousands of these study groups can awake and flourish, with deep roots in their local schools and communities and connected with each other through regional and national communities of practice, we’ll have the foundation for a powerful grassroots movement and, as educators, we’ll make a huge contribution to creating a world of climate justice.
Tom Roderick
I’m an educator, activist, and writer based in New York City. I came to education through the civil rights movement in the sixties and taught in Harlem and East Harlem for ten years, including seven years as teacher-director of a storefront school led by parents. For thirty-six years I served as founding executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, started in 1982 by educators concerned about the danger of nuclear war. Over the years I led Morningside Center to become a national leader in partnering with schools to implement high-quality, research-based programs in social and emotional learning (SEL), restorative practices, and racial equity. In May 2018, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) awarded me its Mary Utne O’Brien Award for Excellence in Expanding Evidence-Based Practice of Social and Emotional Learning.
I have a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s and honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education. I am the author of A School of Our Own: Parents, Power, and Community at the East Harlem Block Schools (Teachers College Press, 2001). I retired from Morningside Center at the end of 2018, and spent four years researching and writing Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education (Harvard Education Press, 2023).